God's Own Port

My most important message is Free Trade. It requires nothing but a change in our perception. Towards that end, let us look at the happy news of the setting up of a new port in Kerala, at Vizhinjam.

Its waters are more than 25 metres deep – so it can handle very big ships.

It has a capacity to handle 4 million containers a year.

What should these containers contain?

Can anyone devise a “policy” by which the “commonwealth” is better served that will decide what these containers should contain?

What is in the best interest of all the new residents of this new port city on the west coast?

How can this new city become a Great City?

As the Directors of the East India Company instructed their Governor at Madras’ Fort St. George, in 1690, long before The Wealth of Nations was written:

“Make your settlement a mart for all nations. For that is how God Almighty of old promised to make Jerusalem great.”

I hope the perception is now dawning that the customs department is an obstacle, and an often insurmountable obstacle at that, maintained by the Central Government to enforce its “foreign trade policies.”

If customs duties are enforced, the total business transacted through this new port will only decline.

What is also worth noting is that there are many, many new port cities that can come up on both the coasts if trade was freed.

All the action will be on the coast – if trade is free. This especially includes urban action. Indyeah needs more and better cities and towns, competing for citizens. Let there be many new free trading cities on our coasts. We need new urban spaces.

So think about it: Let not the rulers from land-locked New Delhi have any say in foreign trade, which is conducted principally by the means of merchant ships. If it makes sense to open up the Sikkim-Tibet trade route over land, it makes even more sense to open up the ports – especially a “deep water port” with a capacity of 4 million containers a year.

Free Trade Makes Sense.

And if there is a public investment that is required in the interest of “common profit” it is a coastal expressway network. Then the port cities will develop along with many satellites, and urban overcrowding in any one place will be avoided.

Note that the Central Planner’s “Golden Quadrilateral” highway project does not include coastal expressways.

As usual, nothing makes sense in official policy.

Or I am nuts.

Or both.